Who are you and what have you done with my television show?

Rain pointed out that TNT has started showing season 4 of “Alias” in preparation for the premiere of season 5. I watched a couple from the TiVo, and thought this is no good. The people are still there, and they’re still saying things that sound familiar, but everything’s all different. And they’re spoiling stuff. This isn’t the show I fell in love with! I must’ve come in halfway through the season and ruined everything!

But then I checked an episode guide, and I found I’d started with episode 3. All the big changes that were confusing me so, had happened in the first two episodes. Damn! When they reboot a show, they don’t fool around.

Then I decided as long as I was confused, there’s no harm in watching both seasons simultaneously. So I went ahead and watched tonight’s premiere of season 5. Damn! When they reboot a show, they don’t fool around.

So as near as I can make out:

Everybody quit the CIA and told chubby agent Weiss that they’re going to work for a bank, but then Sydney’s sister turned into a zombie and then moved in with her, but Vaughn’s father changed his name and then died and then Sloane was leading this top-secret black-ops agency of the CIA from his jail cell but Jack killed Irina Derevko and then she got engaged to Vaughn but they broke up because he was upset about killing Lauren but then he got her pregnant and died so now it’s four months later and Sydney is planning revenge.

But there were also lots of explosions and some dude got freeze-dried and then shattered into a million pieces when he got shot. That was bad-ass. Who needs to understand what’s going on? They probably don’t understand what’s going on.

5 thoughts on “Who are you and what have you done with my television show?”

There was something really anti-climactic about Vaughn’s death. I think that was his clone, or the death was staged to keep the evil dudes off his back. And I think when the baby is born, he’ll be a stay-in-hiding dad while Sydney continues to earn the big bucks kicking ass.

I loved watching them try and hide Garner’s belly last night. They used everything in the book: A shawl. A big purse. A corn field. A moving train.

The funny bit about that is that the corn field, the moving train, the coffin, and all that seemed perfectly normal. It was the shawl and the purse that stood out. I’m really glad they wrote it into the story, and then fast-forwarded four months, so they don’t have to act like they’re fooling anybody by hiding it. I was worried they were going to have her abducted by aliens. (They haven’t done that yet, have they?)

Everything about Vaughn’s death seemed rushed and fake, but then everything about this show seems rushed and fake. I really can’t predict what they’re going to do with it — which is pretty good, I guess. The lead of your sexy action series has gotten pregnant, so you can’t have her do action scenes anymore and can’t have her be in every episode, so what do you do? You kill off the male lead of the show. Huh?

And whether he’s really dead, or a zombie, or a clone, or a double, or a quadruple-agent in hiding, I realized I really don’t care. I was saying that I have the same opinion of Vaughn that Jack Bristow does — I think he’s weak and boring and only tolerate him because he’s useful on occasion and he makes Sydney happy.

I have to confess that I did read the boards of “television without pity” to see if they could make sense of all of it. They couldn’t, but somebody did have a great response to the season premiere:

“Girl just can’t get married, can she?”

I don’t get the whole “Vaughn is hot” thing; the guy’s about as bland as you can get. Even Will Tippin was more memorable because he was annoying and you wanted him to die. How can anybody notice Vaughn when you’ve got Jennifer Garner all over the place being all stunning? And Lena Olin? And Lauren, who was finally hot when she turned evil? And hell, Francie had her moments, too.

I did think of a reason I want Vaughn to still be alive, though — because by the end of the series, I want every character to be somehow related to every other character.